Nicola Griffith's Blog, page 6

Did the Easter Bunny Bring Aliens?

Not alien ocean goo

A few days ago I woke up to a request from a Major Media Company to talk on one of their flagship programmes from a science fiction writer’s perspective on the recent paper by Professor Nikku Madhusudhan (Cambridge) and others suggesting they have found signs of life on a planet 124 light years away. The interview didn’t work out because of the time difference but it set me thinking.

What’s actually been detected?

For decades, people have been searching for signs of extraterrestrial life—mostly for signs of intelligent life—out there in the cosmos. This search falls into two basic categories:

Technosignatures—searching for evidence of technology (past, present, or speculative) that could only be produced by intelligent life, whether the solid, tangible technology itself (a giant spaceship, laser beams shooting at earth, a Dyson sphere wrapping a star) or signals such as radio and TV shows, alien music, binary code messages, and so on.Biosignatures—the hunt for chemicals generally associated with life (as we know it), such as oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane, etc.

Madhusudham et al claim that, using the James Webb Space Telescope, they have made a ‘3-sigma (3σ’) detection’ of a biosignature in the atmosphere of K2-18b, a sub-Neptune planet orbiting a red dwarf star 124 light years—700 trillion miles—away (in the constellation Leo, if you’re interested).

The so-called biosignature is dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulphide (DMDS), molecules which, here on earth, are produced only by life: DMS mostly by marine microorganisms like phytoplankton and bacteria but also, strangely enough, truffles (it’s the distinctive smell of DMS that enables pigs and trained dogs to truffle them); and DMDS by a variety of bacteria, fungi, plants and animals. The interesting thing, according to Madhusudham, is that there is far more of that stuff on K2-18b than on earth. And he suggests that therefore it must be a ‘hycaean’ planet—orbiting in a habitable zone in which the surface could sustain liquid water, and that in fact the surface is one vast warm ocean blanked by a hydrocarbon atmosphere—hydrogen, methane, and/or other hydrocarbons.

Let look at that those claims.

What is a 3σ’ detection and does this meet that standard? If I’ve interpreted my very cursory reading correctly, it means the researchers believe there is a 99.73% chance that what they’ve identified as DMS and/or DMDS actually is DMS/DMDS. I don’t mind admitting that the astrophysics and statistics are way above my pay grade but if you take a look at this Bluesky thread by Dr Ryan MacDonald, exoplanet astronomer at the University of Michigan and a NASA Sagan Fellow, you’ll see he thinks Cambridge’s 3σ detection basically parses out to, well, not just weak evidence but, statistically, no evidence at all. So, hmmmmn.Is K2-18b even a hycean planet? No one knows, but, according to this recent paper released on reprint server arXiv, being a giant molten ball of heaving magma, or even a gas planet, might suit the evidence better. Again, this is beyond my competence to judge but, again, pause for thought.If K2-18b is a hycean planet, and it is full of DMS/DMDS, does that necessarily indicate life? Well, no. Apparently a year ago researchers reported a detection of DMS on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko—unlikely to be hospitable to life. Also last year, some lab experiments produced DMS by shining UV light on a simulated exoplanet atmosphere. And earlier this year some radio astronomers reported finding DMS in the gas and dust between stars. The one argument on the Cambridge scientists’ side is the quantities they believe they have detected—more than a thousand earth oceans’ worth. (Er, not sure about that figure—I’m quoting from memory. Go read the paper.)

So right now my jury is still deliberating and a long way from reaching a verdict.

The Fermi Paradox

So if there are all these caveats regarding whether or not it actually is life, why are so many people getting so excited? Well, first and most probably, because it so much more fun to contemplate alien life far enough away that they can’t possibly invade that to think about all the idiotic invasions right here on Earth that are either currently under way or being mooted by political fools. And second because one day, inevitably, someone will stumble across life elsewhere—so why not now? In the Milky Way alone there are billions of stars similar to the sun—billions of stars that might have planets orbiting in the habitable zones. And many of these solar systems are far older than ours—the odds (so huge they’re overwhelming) are that, yes, somewhere out there there’s life. Furthermore, those odds are very good that some of that life is intelligent. But where are they?

So the Fermi Paradox in a nutshell describes the conflict between

the argument that the scale and probability favour intelligent life being common in the universe and the total lack of evidence of same having arisen any time or place except here.

As I’ve always understood it, the Fermi Paradox is specific to intelligent life—and as early as the middle of last century SF writers such as Leigh Brackett suggested a very reasonable solution to the paradox: the smarter a civilisation gets, the more likely it is to self-destruct. But I’m not sure a raft of algae floating on an ocean on an alien planet reaches that threshold.

But what if it did?

What are the implications?

What would it mean if there really was life out there? How would that knowledge affect: My relationship with the universe? The way I think about my place in it? About what this means for writing SF?

Answering the last bit first—because like all writers i’m lazy, and prefer to do the easy bits first—the answer is straightforward: with the exception of my first novel I’ve never written about aliens and have no particular plans to. So the answer is: It doesn’t. Nor will it affect what I read and how I feel about it.

In terms of my relationship to the universe and my place within it, well, I wish I had something deeply profound to say but if pushed right now my answers would be I don’t know and Not very much.

I haven’t leapt immediately from a) the possibility that far, far from this tiny self-enclosed fragile droplet of the universe something else is alive, to b) the sudden fear of spaceships popping out of wormholes with laser cannon aimed at Seattle—or hope that they fill our consciousness with the sudden complete knowledge of how to cure cancer (or MS or greed)—or relief at the possibility that with a wave of their techno wand they can turn every coal- and gas- and nuclear-fission powered generator into a clean, green power planet that needs no ugly overhead grid and makes everything work perfectly at zero cost.

Under my caution and scepticism I do also find this interesting. I’m not sure that feeling rises to the level of exciting but definitely interesting. That’s because, given the millions, billions, trillions of star systems in the cosmos it would defy logic to believe, for even a second, that there’s no other life out there. Of course there’s life. I’ve always believed that. So if by next week we have a 6σ’ detection (beyond the possibility of chance) of an amount of DSM and or DSDM impossible to arise from anything but but a vast warm ocean on another planet with something alive floating in it, my view of my place in the cosmos won’t wobble. Understanding through graphs and charts that there’s some alien goo 700 trillion miles away is just not the same as peering through my telescope one night at the moon and seeing the clangers hoot and wave back. (They are a family of knitted mouse-like things that live in burrows delved from moon craters and covered for protection by, er, dustbin lids. Oh, never mind. It’s a British thing.)

So alien goo? Not exciting. But what if it’s a vast ocean positively teeming with a whole variety of life—the hycean equivalent of whales and dolphins and kelp and squid and albatrosses and herring and crabs and coral ad octopuses and sea stars and… Now that starts to get exciting! But does it excite me any differently than the creatures of our own seas? After all, there’s still so much to learn! We know orcas, for example, are sentient, intelligent beings with a transmissible culture and language. I would love to spend time trying to learn more, to understand how they feel and experience their world—but I don’t want it enough to do anthing different with my life.

Consider, too, that people still treat orca just like giant fish who are either amusing or inconvenient, depending on your perspective. And we still have no clue what they’re saying to each other, or what they think of us. And we persist in behaving in ways we know will lead to their extinction (and, y’know, our own). On some level they make no difference to our lives or our place in the universe. The fact of other life, right here, that’s too alien to understand makes me feel wonderfully connected to the world—putting my hand on a tree trunk, listening to a bird, feeling my cat purr or watching him stalk a beetle—they make me feel very much part of the cosmos. What difference would the alien equivalent of orcas 700 trillion miles away make? Would the notion of other life so far away change my life, the way I feel about my life, the way I live it or write about it? I have no idea. The’re no way to know but to find out.

So before we can tell if these Easter eggs are aliens, if the Easter Bunny brought us something worth getting exercised over, let’s first get to five-sigma on a real biosignature. Then let’s figure out what sort planet it is. Then what sort of life. Then ask me again.

At least we didn’t die

You know life has been a rollercoaster for a while when the best thing you can find to say about one, just-resolved situation is, Well, hey, at least we didn’t die.

For context, what I’ll describe here is just one such situation we’ve been facing this year alone. Most of them I’m not willing to talk about because either I just don’t want to or they’re not yet resolved. This one is just the most recent, and feels emblematic.

Many years ago when we moved to this house we installed a top of the line natural gas-powered central heating furnace (with all the air filtration bells and whistles) and a high-powered air-conditioning system (which, with MS, I need).1 Over the years we had the installation company, and then, when that company changed hands, another company to come twice a year to check and maintain the system. Apart from changing the filters (which we use as well as an electrostatic system) and cleaning a few things, the whole HVAC set up performed flawlessly.

During the first two years of the pandemic, we let the maintenance slide. Then, when we got back to it, again, nothing wrong. It was old, and some of the outdoor bits rattled a bit when they first kicked on, but it was still operating within acceptable efficiency limits.

Then began our series of horrible years, when things were so overwhelming and insane we were constantly having to cancel and reschedule everything (this is still true—it happened just last week when we were supposed to be having some friends over for dinner but ended up in the Emergency Department and then the hospital instead—but to a lesser degree). It was a time of huge terrible things going wrong but also every small thing that could go wrong. For example, the smoke detector went wonky and shrieked at all hours; the carbon monoxide monitor died; when we had our new walk-in tub installed, the folks who put in the new electrical stuff broke the custom pull-down steps up into the loft space (where we have most of our large systems).2 Because the steps were custom and we didn’t have time to find a contractor who could handle it, we couldn’t get any upstairs systems—like the HVAC—serviced. But we didn’t worry because, y’know, the gas heater was brand new, and the HVAC was a proven workhorse, and still working: still warm in winter and cool in summer. We added everything to our massive list of things to tackle when we weren’t struggling to just keep our heads above water.

As we got more and more of the crazy bits of life onto a more predictable schedule, we started gradually picking up the reins of our adult life. Including maintenance and repair. We spent money adjusting my wheelchair ramp. We insulated the house. We found a handyman service who could handle the loft steps issue. We got back to all the regular and necessary cyclical health and house service things—eyes, teeth, blood work, yard work, vehicle maintenance—we’d let slide. Including getting the HVAC serviced.

On Friday the tech came, trundled upstairs…and came down immediately, white-faced, and turned everything off at the thermostat. When he’d turned the heat on he’d measured carbon monoxide (CO) at 600 parts per million and rapidly climbing.

According to OSHA, here is what CO levels indicate:

Normal (0-9 ppm): Found in clean outdoor air and well-ventilated indoor spaces.Moderate (10-50 ppm): Can cause mild symptoms like headaches and dizziness over prolonged exposure.High (70-200 ppm): Leads to severe health effects, requiring immediate action.Severe (400+ ppm): Life-threatening concentrations that can cause unconsciousness or death within minutes.

He was pale and slightly sweaty, and went to sit down outside for a while. Meanwhile, Kelley and I opened every window and skylight and door in the house. The cats were already safe outside.

The tech, when he’d recovered, inspected all the outdoor parts of the system, then, on finding the CO levels upstairs okay enough to get closer, inspected all that. It turns out, in just two years the entire system had gone from old-but-fine to Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! levels of imminent death, destruction, and horror: everything was cracked and broken and damaged; the insulation on the heavy wiring was eaten through; the connectors were rusted; the flue was split; the blades on the fan were bent. I can’t complain—we got over 20 years of excellent service from that old system—but, yeah, we should have moved that nonworking CO monitor up the list…3

Aaaaaanyway, long story short: we froze all weekend (well, okay, here in Seattle the temperatures were pretty mild so we just wore many clothes and grumbled a lot), we now have a brand spanking new high-efficiency furnace, and by the end of today should be the proud owners of a dual-fuel furnace and heat pump capable of cooling and heating our house to the desired temperature in minutes and able to clean the air of anything remotely resembling viruses, smoke particulates, and/or allergens.

It cost so very much money I don’t even want to talk about it—which we had to pay on the same day as our tax bill, woo hoo! and of course not long after some fool’s tariff pronouncements had shaved 15% off our retirement savings—but, hey, at least we didn’t die.

Before the tax code changed, when individual healthcare costs were still deductible, AC was deemed so important for people with MS (when we overheat we get something called Uhthoff’s Phenonenon) that it was, in fact, tax deductible. ︎And, oh, that electrical subcontractor is a whole other story, more Byzantine and winding than Dickens’ Chancery case in Bleak House… I’ll tell that story sometime, just not today. ︎And of course in a classic case of horse meet barn door we now have several, all in tip-top working order ︎

Golden math-joy, art, and the revolutuion

You may or may not have noticed that this website has a new thumbnail icon. This post is about where it came from.

For my zoomorphic series over on Patreon I’ve been playing around with different interlaces. Readers of this blog may already have seen a very simple triangular one I used for a picture of foxes and swifts chasing each other exuberantly in my Happy Spring! post. But here’s the swift on its own so it’s easier to see how the interlace forms the basis of all the curves around it.

As I’ve said before over there, the biggest challenge for me for most of the images is doing all those curves freehand. With interlace, multiply that by, oh, about a zillion.

After the swift I tried something a bit more complicated to represent the scales of a fish. I failed pretty miserably at first, but then realised that if I concentrated on how interlace works rather than on getting beautiful curves, I could manage something. The end result was far too squared-off for a Celtic interlace, but as a beginner it was easier for me to focus on rounding regular corners to form interlace than to just dive in with the freehand curves.

For the next one, though, I wanted something absolutely rational in the sense of two lines intertwined around each other such that you could clearly trace each and tell which was which. The most ambitious one I’ve tried so far (ambitious for me—the scribes of Lindisfarne and Kells would laugh at such child’s play) is one I copied from the Lindisfarne Gospels, a two-strand wreath shape. My version is far from perfect but, honestly, when talking about freehand there is no perfect. I could go on improving it incrementally for weeks, and and sometime, when I’m thinking about another project else and need something to occupy my hands (my version of knitting or whittling) I might do just that. For now, this is how it looks:

It just begs for something to go inside it—and what better, in Hild terms, than an ammonite? So I drew a giant ammonite—and, ha, if you think doing curves freehand is hard you should try getting a mathematically-accurate (based on phi) ammonite! (I’ll show that and then the snakestone version I made from it on Patreon in another post.)

But then I thought, What if I make it a golden ammonite—to match the Golden Ratio of phi? And then I realised I already had a great example of that from the cover art from my first novel, Ammonite. And then I thought, Well, if I’m doing a golden ammonite, I may as well make the wreath gold, too. And since I’ve broken the black-and-white rule already, why not make the background blue? So I did:

And I liked that so much I turned it into my thumbnail icon (avatar?).

Ah, but then, because I was seeing all the photos of great protest signs last weekend, I thought about revolutions, and the paraphrase of an Emma Goldman quote that has come down to us as “It’s not my revolution if I can’t dance to it.”

So then I made my original ammonites dance!

I’ll futz with it a bit more at some point so that the thickness and shadows are uniform and the black shape in the centre in and among the ammonites is much closer to a 3-armed triskelion—like the 3-legged flag of the Isle of Man. But right now it pleases me well enough: art, golden math joy, and the revolution all in one…

This post is a copy of one I added to my Patreon page a couple of days ago—one available to all members, free and paid. So if you’re keen on seeing more of this kind of stuff you can sign up now for absolutely zero money. And I mean zero: your membership will stay free—no sudden conversion to paid (because no one will take your credit info)—unless and until you choose to upgrade to paid, at which point you get access to all kinds of stuff I’m currently unwilling to post in more public forums: queer poetry, an upcoming audio version of never-before published fiction, and more. If you do choose to upgrade to paid it will help fund publicity for the three Aud novels coming out in the US in June and the UK in July—and publicity for another, new book, already finished and scheduled, that I’ll talk about closer to the time…

Meanwhile, on Patreon, a new post has just gone up: Getting Medieval on Charlie and George.

Lesbian poems: small moments

Not all feelings are big and dramatic, not even lesbian feelings. Sometimes they’re less coup de foudre and more dormouse: small, warm and soft and nestled in the nest.

Over on Patreon, as part of my Lesbian Poems project, I’ve just posted three small poems about three small moments. You have to be a paid member to read them, but I sometimes make posts available briefly to free members when the whim takes me. So there’s nothing to lose by signing up for free, and possibly something to gain, sometimes, unexpectedly. And who knows, perhaps you may then want to up your membership to less than the price of a fancy coffee a month for access to poetry, unpublished fiction, unpublished essays, long juicy map posts, lots of zoomorphic pictures of beasties, audio of me reading from unpublished fiction, and more. And that, dear Potential Patron, would help me pay for pubicists to get the word out about Aud this summer on both sides of the Atlantic.

Yodelling in triumph: Aud in the UK!

Pre-order

Bookshop.org | Amazon UK | Waterstones | WH Smith

Well, after yesterday’s amazing news I have even more! I am bursting with joy: 27 years after The Blue Place first hit the shelves, the three Aud Torvingen novels will finally—finally!—be published in my own country, by Canongate, July 2025. I could not be more pleased: Canongate are the perfect home for Aud—sharp, smart, literary, focused, and innovative.1 Here’s the press release from The Bookseller.

Why did it take so long? I could write a whole essay about that2 but the headline: It was a combination of literary snobbery, Aud being before her time, heteronormativity, and timidity.

By snobbery I don’t mean that when in the 90s I submitted The Blue Place I got, Oh, this isn’t literary fiction it’s genre rubbish! No. I mean (and I’m paraphrasing here from various acquiring editors): Oh, this is wonderfully written! It’s exciting, gripping, just fabulous but we can’t sell this—it’s too literary to sell as genre, and the author is clearly having far too much fun for it to be serious literature.

I am not kidding; I wish I were.

It was with submitting that first book that I and my agents also ran into the prejudice of editors who were, at the time (and to some degree still are), used to crime series protagonists moving unchanged from book to book, and if there was violence to be done, and the protagonist was male, the ‘likeable’ protagonist had a ‘psychotic’ sidekick who did that brutal stuff;3 if the protagonist was a woman then they were damaged—ex-alcoholics, victims of abuse, very (very) angry with men, and/or avenging angels protecting their mother/sister/daughter—because, well, women can’t use violence as a tool the way men do (though of course only Bad Men enjoy winning) because, well, women Just Don’t Do That.4 They certainly don’t do that and live to tell the tale rather than driving off a cliff or running into a hail of bullets or sheltering the tiny child with their redeemed, dying body. These editors did not like the fact that Aud is hero Just Because—because she can, because it’s the right thing to do, because with great power comes great responsibility, and because winning just feels fucking great—just like most heroes.

The heteronormativity came in the form of two different editors who both said the same thing, Oh, we’ve already bought one of those this year. By ‘one of those’ they meant a novel with a lesbian protagonist. Apparently UK readers could only cope with one queer book a year from a literary press. Because, d’you see, there just aren’t that many lesbians who read real literature, and who else would be interested?

And finally there was—and is, always—the English (and I do mean English) timidity. If a book is too unusual (Aud), or too long (Hild, Menewood)5, or too short (So Lucky, Spear) English trade publishers won’t risk it.

Despite all that, the Aud series came very close to being published, twice. The first time, in 2002, The Women’s Press acquired the first two and were going to make them their lead titles.6 We were discussing cover art when the company went bankrupt. Poof. Tents folded in the middle of the night and gone. The second time, an academic press (small but widely admired for their innovative and experimental approach to nonfiction) wanted to use the Aud books to launch their first fiction imprint. I was excited—but it turned out they would only acquire them if they could spread the risk by simultaneously publishing in the US through their academic partner, MIT Press. As I’d just sold the US rights to FSG/Picador (my long-time US publisher) that fell apart, too.

Then I and my present agent were hopeful that the UK publisher of Hild and Menewood could be persuaded to take on Aud once Menewood was out over there and selling well. Only, well, it turned out that although Hild had done well—far better than expected—for said publisher, they thought Menewood was unpublishable. They would only take it if I broke it into two books and cut a big chunk out of the second.

So there I was, 30 years into a multiple-award-winning career, with only my first two novels (Ammonite and Slow River, both SF) properly published in the UK.7 It’s hard to describe how that feels. Let me just say that Menewood not being available unless I let it be butchered was the last straw. For a few months I dwelt in a place of despair and rage—red, walk-away-from-it-all-as-it-burned rage.

But. The Aud books were once again under option from a producer with a known actor attached,8 and Picador here in the US finally committed to a publication date. My agent and I decided to have one more try for Aud in the UK…

…and it worked. It worked! I can still hardly believe it. After all these years…

I am thrilled that Aud finally—finally!—is about to get the attention she deserves. They are good books—I mean fucking good books. Apart from the lack of smartphones (which has a huge impact on the events of the first one) I promise you, they have not dated—rather, as Francis Spufford points out,9 the world has finally caught up. Yes, I’m crowing— Actually, no, I’m not just crowing I’m positively yodelling in triumph, beaming with beneficence, and dancing in delight: Aud will finally have her day in the British sun.

They published Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. And Barack Obama’s memoir before he was famous—and plenty of other fine things besides. ︎And I have written one speech (that I gave in 2001, in Liverpool) about part of the reason, and turned it into an essay, “Brilliance and Beauty and Risk,” that I’ll publish here or on Patreon at some point. ︎I am not dissing these books in any way—I’ve read them and thoroughly enjoyed them. They’re just nothing like the Aud books. ︎I am not complaining about these books—some of them were very good books. I read them. I enjoyed them. They just weren’t like Aud. ︎Seriously, no one in the UK wanted Hild—it was both too long and too against the norm (which is medieval women who suffer unwanted royal marriages or who are mewed up in a convent struggling against the authority of a bishop). Eventually my agent managed to browbeat the boss of one publisher to persuade the editor of their brand new, experimental digital-first imprint to publish it—for the princely sum of $500. Again, I am not kidding. Again, I wish I were. ︎If you visit bookshop.org you can still see the old catalogue entry for The Blue Place from The Women’s Press.. ︎So Lucky was published briefly by Handheld Press for their Modern series—the same folks who produced that handsome edition of Vonda McIntyre’s The Exile Waiting for their Classics series (wonderful books)—but they folded the Modern series after just two novels. So it was out of print very quickly. ︎Don’t get excited—well, okay, get excited if you want. Excitement is free. But options happen all the time. And in fact this latest one just lapsed. I will certainly always let you know when/if something makes it through the development stage and nears production. ︎“The Aud Torvingen novels aren’t just noir—they’re a journey through the dark heart of noir and out the other side to somewhere hopeful. When the Aud books first came out, it was probably more surprising that the dark journey in question belonged to a queer woman: but even now that the world has begun to catch up with the imagination of Nicola Griffith, these novels are still astonishing. Visceral, unflinching, superbly executed, ultimately optimistic: Aud as in audacious.” ︎

Shock. Joy. And O. MY. GOD.

Well. Here’s some news. I don’t know what to say. It’s…ungraspable.

SFWA Names Nicola Griffith as the 41st Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master

Can you believe it’s been 50 years since our first Grand Master was announced?

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is proud to celebrate the longevity of this distinguished title with Nicola Griffith, our 41st Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master.

The SFWA Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award recognizes “lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.” It is named after author Damon Knight, SFWA’s founder and the organization’s 13th Grand Master. Initially, the Grand Master wasn’t given out every year, but from 1975 to 2025 much has changed in our field, including the consistency with which we award this prestigious post.

This year, our Grand Master enters a role previously held by Peter S. Beagle, Connie Willis, Nalo Hopkinson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Anne McCaffrey, Robin McKinley, Joe Haldeman, and other legends of genre fiction who have been granted this title.

Nicola Griffith, PhD, is a dual UK/US citizen and the author of nine novels, including Hild, Spear, and Ammonite. In addition to her fiction and nonfiction (New York Times, Guardian, Nature) she is known for her data-driven 2015 work on bias in the literary ecosystem; as founder and co-host, with Alice Wong, of #CripLit; and for her work on queering the Early Medieval. Awards include The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Society of Authors ADCI Literary Prize, two Washington State Book Awards, the Premio Italia, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Tiptree (Otherwise) awards, the Outstanding Mid-Career Authors Prize, and six Lambda Literary Awards. In 2024 she was inducted into the Museum of Popular Culture’s Science Fiction + Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Griffith lives with her wife, writer Kelley Eskridge, in Seattle, where she takes enormous delight in everything. This latest title, SFWA’s 41st Grand Master, is no exception:

“I am thunderstruck,” said Griffith, after receiving the news. “Amazed and moved and brimming with joy. I might never stop smiling.”

Widely acclaimed and bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler has known for years how much of a gift Griffith is to the literary community: “Ever since I first read Ammonite–back in 1993 when the world was young–I’ve made it my business to follow Griffith wherever she goes. And I have loved every place she’s taken me. She’s a writer who stuns. Incisive yet lyrical, pragmatic yet sexy, generous yet scary, always brilliant and, best of all, never ever boring. Every book she writes is one more bit of luck for us readers.”

SFWA President Kate Ristau resoundingly agrees:

“It is SFWA’s honor to recognize and celebrate her past achievements, while looking forward to her future triumphs. Her work continues to inspire and challenge me, and when asked to pick a Grand Master to lead us into our Diamond Year, I looked to Nicola for her stunning fiction, as well as her leadership and advocacy. She challenges us to reconsider the past and imagine a better, more inclusive future. She is the perfect Grand Master for our present moment, demonstrating through her life and work how to find one’s self, one’s purpose, and one’s community in complicated times, and to embrace those things joyfully and fully. 50 years after SFWA named its first Grand Master, we are thrilled to shine the spotlight on Nicola Griffith as our 41st.”

The title of 41st Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master will be formally presented to Griffith during our 60th Annual Nebula Awards Conference, held June 5–8, 2025 in Kansas City, Missouri. Registration for the conference is now open here, and details on her panels and appearances will be available shortly at events.sfwa.org. We hope you’ll join us this year in celebrating Griffith’s achievements, and help us to usher in the next chapter of SFWA’s story together.  

Yes, I’ve had a few days to sit with this. No, I still can’t wrap my head around it. I will, I just haven’t yet.

!!!!!!! WOW !!!!!!!

Now this, this is the way to defeat an autocrat

Now, this, this is the way to defeat an autocrat: flocking behaviour. Rutgers University Senate has called for the Big 10 academic institutions to create a joint defence fund and make resources available to any member institution under attack. Go read it.

For a précis of why and how this shit can actually work, here’s a piece I wrote during Trump’s first term:

How to defeat an autocrat: flocking behaviour

It can be done. You just have to have a spine. Look at what those with a spine are doing. Keeping your head down will not save you. Waiting for it all to go away will not save you. Go find your people. Form community. Together we are strong.

Do not sleepwalk into autocracy.

Demented meatloaves: the cats of Kells

Over on Patreon I’ve done a long juicy post about the Cats of Kells: the felines—tabbies, lions, maybe a lynx— illustrated in the Book of Kells, the stunning eighth-century illuminated gospels.

Why am I writing about these cats? Because I’m creating a whole series of black and white zoomorphic drawings based on Early Medieval art. Specifically I’m looking for example of ways to turn my sketches of Charlie and George into proper, medieval-style kitties.

The two books I’ve been using most are the Lindisfarne Gospels (late 7th to early 8th C)—an absolute masterpiece; unmatched—and the Book of Kells (late 8th C, probably). The problem is, I could only find one domestic cat in the Lindisfarne Gospels—whereas there are many in Kells. And that itself is a problem because, well, not to put too fine a point on it, the cats of Kells are not stunning. In fact, they tend to look like demented meatloaves:

Either that or a bag of beachballs covered in fur. They’re not…helpful.

There are lots of other pictures, too—and then my versions of them rendered in black and white, and in another, later post I’ll show you how I translated Charlie and George back to the Early Medieval—but for that you have to read the post.

Enjoy!

Immunological book-burning Nazis and other fun

Post image adapated from Photo by Tali Despins on Unsplash. Image description: a flamethrower throwing fire in a line against a dusk sky.

This is a hasty post. Sorry. The world is on fire, literally and figuratively, personally and politically, in good ways and bad. I’ll have to be brief.

First, just in case you’re tempted to believe otherwise, what’s going on right now in the world is not normal, and pretending it is isn’t going to make it go away. I’m not here to lecture you on what you should or should not be doing—talk to your friends and family, figure out what actions are sustainable for you (because this is a long-haul situation, not a battle to be won in a week). And everyone’s situation and vulnerability is different.

Today I’m here to talk about a couple of other things. Because there’s so very much going on and because so much of the news cycle is being swallowed whole by certain large events, many people are not seeing the news that might remind them to take some precautions against a variety of actual, physical health threats out there. I’m not here to ring alarms—just point out a few things you might want to pay attention to, depending on your situation. Basically, what follows is a quick canter through some main heads. I’m not going to go into great detail—it’s easy enough to search out good information on all of these. It’s just that right now you do actively have to search for it; I’m suggesting you do.

Covid

Covid, for example, is not over. Not only are there new variants popping up, some meaningful enough to be named, but a significant percentage of the global population has Long Covid. For example, a recently-released study of Covid in Catalonia showed that 23% of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 between 2021 and 2023 developed long-COVID, and in more than half of them the symptoms persisted for two years. Think about that: 12% of those who got Covid became, essentially, disabled. Yes, this applies specifically to those infected with earlier versions of SARS-CoV-2, but even with the newer variants, people are still developing Long Covid—though not at the same rates. More to my point here, there are still all those people who are disabled; some will improve but many won’t. What you should do? Make sure your vaccination is up to date. Wear masks around vulnerable people and/or in crowded spaces.

Long Covid

Regarding long Covid, in the UK the government is complaining that so few young people are working—apparently one in 8 young adults aren’t working and are claiming a variety of benefits, especially disability benefits, and, gosh, I wonder if anyone has bothered to find out if a) it’s Long Covid and b) mental-health effects of undergoing lock down at crucial developmental stages. Covid has had and continues to have a massive impact on physical, mental, political and economic health worldwide. Mask up. Get your shots.

Measles

Measles is breaking out all over. Measles is one of the most infectious diseases on earth. Its accepted R0 is 12-18—which means if someone with measles walks through a room, 12-18 of the people who are not fully, two-dose vaccinated will come down with measles. And it remains actively infectious in the air and on surfaces for two hours. I say ‘accepted’ because a meta study from 2017 indicates that the number is much more variable—lower in some cases, higher in others—depending on a host of factors such as vaccination rates, health, age, socioeconomic states and, well, all the usual things. The thing to remember about measles, though, is not just that, hey, it might kill you—or irreparably damage you or your child’s sight, hearing and/or cognitive function—but that in immunological terms it’s a book-burning Nazi.

Measles is the immunological equivalent of the fireman in Fahrenheit 451: it destroys the immune system’s library. You get measles and the virus acts like a flamethrower, hosing the bookshelves where the immune system’s notes, stories, and memories of different diseases are stored. You get measles and suddenly you’re no longer immune to all the other diseases you had before measles; you start again—assuming you don’t die of pneumonia or meningitis or covid or flu or something else first. Please check your vaccination status—and if in doubt get vaccinated. All it takes is one infected person walking through a major airport and, wham, you have hot clusters popping up from Santa Fe to North Dakota—and it spreads like wildfire. Here’s a nifty measles dashboard from the Center of Outbreak Response Innovation (CORI) covering the United States. As of today (Tuesday) there have been 435 cases reported so far in 2025—the total for the whole of 2024 was 285. This outbreak is going to take at least a year to extinguish. If we’re lucky. What you should do: wherever you live, make sure you’re vaccinated. Most people are. If in doubt, go get a shot—this vaccine is super low risk and hugely effective. If you live in somewhere like Gaines County, Texas—with an MMR vax coverage rate of only 82% and the epicentre of the current outbreak, wear a mask and wash your hands, a lot. If you don’t live there, don’t visit. Yes, even if you have low antibodies, you might not need to worry too much because you still have your T calls and B cells on the case, but it does no harm to take extra precautions.

Bird Flu

Highly pathogenic avian influenza—oh, yes, bird flu is still with us, still getting more widespread.

Another novel reassortant in clade 2.3.4.4b avian influenza H5N1 viruses, India. Another person in Cambodia has died. Here in the US it is, literally, everywhere: 50 states and Puerto Rico. Now endemic in cows—found in nearly a1,000 herds. (Yes, herds, not individual cows.) All my usual advice on precautions still applyAccording to Johns Hopkins, “More than 100 domestic cats have been documented with H5N1 infection in the past year. A genetic mutation associated with increased infectiousness and disease severity—PB2 E627K—was recently detected in two infected cats in New Jersey. The mutation is similar to one found in San Bernardino dairy cows, although with a slightly different origin. The cows were infected with the B3.13 strain of H5N1, whereas the cats were infected with the D1.1 strain, which is prevalent in wild birds and has been detected in several cow herds in Nevada and Arizona. The mutation, which was also detected in a Texas dairy worker infected last March, is associated with H5N1 viruses that replicate in mammals.”According to The Verge “In February, the CDC published, deleted, then rereleased an unsettling report describing two instances where indoor cats in the households of dairy workers fell ill with bird flu. Out of five cats, three got sick and two died. Some people in the households, including those who had no direct exposure to farm animals or raw milk, also showed symptoms of illness. Despite layers of safety precautions, H5N1 found its way in and potentially spread from cow to human, human to cat, clothes to cat, cat to cat, or cat to human. The web of possible transmissions and infections remains unclear and unconfirmed.” Oh, yes, and now we have the world’s first case of bird flu in sheep, in Yorkshire, no less. People keep saying the risk is low—and it still is, relatively speaking—but bird flu is now endemic in the US andn the risk of human pandemic is growing. I’d guess our odds of a bird flu pandemic are now at least 10%Chronic Wasting Disease

Oh, and don’t forget chronic wasting disease (CWD), which is a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), a prion-based infectious, fatal neurodegenerative disease, now found in many parts of the US—the deer, elk (etc) version of mad cow (BSE) disease. Which gives humans variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. It’s been turning up in captive/farmed and wild/hunted beasts. Prions are “resistant to denaturation by chemical and physical agents.” In other words, bleach won’t kill them, or alcohol, or heat—no amount of cooking renders it safe. So please check the sources of you game meats carefully. And if you can’t find out, don’t eat it.

Personal News

There’s a lot—a lot!—going on in my life right now, much of it good and some of it frankly marvellous. You’ll be hearing about some of that over the coming days and weeks and months. We’re heading into a busy time.

Meanwhile, there will be a steady feed of posts over on Patreon, so if you want to fund a good cause—me! publicising my books!—go sign up.

Meanwhile, stay tuned and stay safe.

Morning mist

The word is quiet and misty this morning. Here in our cul-de-sac all I can hear is bird song, and the fog rolling up the ravine from the Sound smells of briny, far away places abd other lives. It’s a good day to be alive.

Clematis, always the first to bloom. The cherry tree, on the other hand, is always later than any other cherry tree in the cityThe front of the house, mist wreathing bare trees and green grass.This winter we had an unusual number of survivors. Here are our first flowers of the year, some kind of ground cover with little blue blooms brave against the mist.